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The Sun School feat (CW, p. 112) allows you to make a free attack whenever you move instantaneously (e.g., teleport) adjacent to an enemy. It requires BAB +4 and the Flurry of Blows ability.

The Snap Kick feat (ToB, p. 32) allows you to make an extra unarmed attack whenever you make a melee attack, comboing nicely with Sun School for a kind of budget version of Shadow Pounce. It requires BAB +6 and Improved Unarmed Strike.

That means to get the prerequisites for both feats in E6, you somehow need to get Flurry of Blows without losing any levels' worth of BAB. Most of the obvious ways of getting Flurry of Blows (e.g., levels in Monk) don't work, because they lose at least one point of BAB.

Is it possible to qualify for both of these feats in E6? I'm using the "official" E6 rules. All first party 3.5 content is allowed, as is 3.0 content that has not received an updated 3.5 version.

A_S00
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  • Is this for an actual campaign or is this theorycrafting? Is there any limitation on which books are at your disposal? – GreedyRadish Feb 07 '19 at 22:44
  • @GreedyRadish Theorycrafting for now, but hoping to use it in an upcoming actual campaign that's in the "vague preplanning" stage right now. All 1st party 3.5 books, and all unupdated 3.0 material is allowed. Homebrew, 3rd party, and PF content are not allowed (or at least only allowed on a "beg the DM and pray" basis). – A_S00 Feb 07 '19 at 22:54
  • ...someone in my E6 game was discussing this combination literally yesterday. What a weird coincidence. – KRyan Feb 07 '19 at 23:10
  • I can't help but point out that you haven't included in your requirements that the build actually have a way to teleport (and thereby use this combo). Are you planning to cover that purely with items/Martial Study? – Miniman Feb 07 '19 at 23:31
  • @Miniman I'm mostly hoping that whatever solution is provided won't take up all 6 levels of my build. My plan A is Warblade and/or Crusader levels plus Martial Study (Shadow Jaunt), but if that's inconsistent with good answers to this question, I'll look for other ways. I haven't really settled on the rest of the build yet. – A_S00 Feb 07 '19 at 23:38

1 Answers1

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Yes... but it’s a bit cheesy. There are no1 full-BAB classes that offer flurry of blows. So we have to make one.

The idea is to use Tashalatora, from Secrets of Sarlona, along with war mind, from Expanded Psionics Handbook (or the SRD here), and have Tashalatora stack your war mind levels “with your monk levels to determine your AC bonus, flurry of blows attacks, and unarmed damage from the monk class.” In order to do so, you must take Monastic Training, from Eberron Campaign Setting, and choose war mind with that feat.

Note that this means taking both Monastic Training and Tashalatora with zero levels in the monk class. Neither feat requires that you do so, so this is completely legal—in fact, since Monastic Training requires nothing at all, you can feel free to take that feat before you even take war mind, as it does not require that the class you choose be a class you actually have.

This also means treating your effective monk level as 0 (your actual monk level) + 1 (your war mind level), thus gaining the monk AC bonus, flurry of blows, and unarmed strike damage. Nothing in Tashalatora requires that you actually have monk levels; contrast the wording with any prestige class that advances spellcasting, which will specify it must be an “existing” class that you advance.

By doing these two things, you end up with BAB +6/+1 and flurry of blows by 6th level. You are now eligible to take Sun School and/or Snap Kick with your bonus E6 feats.

  1. I’ve checked several places for candidates I suspected, and none of them panned out. I’m a little surprised, though, and will continue searching. Notably, battle dancer and Shou disciple don’t do it.
KRyan
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  • I know the Tashalatora-without-Monk thing gets argued about a fair bit (e.g., Curmudgeon doesn't think it works). Do you have any thoughts about its RAW footing besides "check with your DM"? (Good answer and upvoted regardless!) – A_S00 Feb 07 '19 at 23:45
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    @A_S00 Yes: the feat is ambiguous. Anyone claiming otherwise isn’t being fair to the text. Always keep in mind that Curmudgeon has an agenda: he maintains that RAW is perfectly sensible and reasonable, and is very proud of the fact that he runs the game “strictly by RAW” with the exception of some small fixed number of houserules. In reality, RAW doesn’t work nearly as neatly as he likes to claim, and a very great deal of it that he claims to run by RAW is actually being forced into shape by non-RAW concerns (primarily, balance and good sense). This leads him to overstate his position. – KRyan Feb 07 '19 at 23:57
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    @A_S00 That said, with this answer, I also have an agenda—I want this to work so that I can give you a viable answer. Ultimately, the feat itself is ambiguous: it does not mention what characters without monk levels should do. That’s an absence of evidence for any given position you want to take, not evidence in either direction. That said, I would make the case that other options do explicitly explain this, and Tashalatora’s failure to do so might be telling (or might just be a mistake). And “your X feature” does not have to mean what he claims in the English language. – KRyan Feb 08 '19 at 00:00